ECHOES OF VALTER DEŠPALJ
Latica Anić, cello
Integral Performance of the Six Cello Suites (J. S. Bach)
Latica Anić (Zagreb, 1994) began learning the cello in the class of Mihovil Karuza at the age of seven. She actively participated in masterclasses with internationally renowned cellists and pedagogues such as Miklos Perenyi, Jerome Pernoo, Laszlo Fenyö, Jens Peter Maintz, Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt, Gary Hoffman, Jian Wang, and others. As a scholarship holder of the Musik und Jugend Foundation, she attended seminars given by Valter Dešpalj at the Academy of Music in Liechtenstein. Since 2010, she has been a student of Valter Dešpalj at the Academy of Music in Zagreb and the Academy of Music of the Principality of Liechtenstein. She spent the academic year 2014/2015 at the Karlsruhe University of Music in the class of Laszlo Fenyö. She graduated in Zagreb in 2016, and since October of the same year, she has been pursuing further studies in the classes of Raphael Merlin and Michel Strauss at the Conservatoire à rayonnement regional de Boulogne-Billancourt in Paris.
She is the winner of state and international competitions, among the most recent of which are first prizes at the International Cello Competition in Liezen, Austria, and at the Third Croatian Competition of Young Music Artists "Papandopulo" in Zagreb. In 2015, she won the City of Samobor Award at the 12th International Competition of Young Musicians "Ferdo Livadić" in Samobor for the best performance of a work by a Croatian composer (B. Papandopulo: Rapsodia concertante). In April 2017, she became the winner of the jubilee 50th Darko Lukić Tribune, organized by the Croatian Society of Music Artists and the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall. In 2020, she received the Plaque of the City of Omiš.
She has made notable chamber music appearances in Germany and the Czech Republic, performing with esteemed musicians such as Matthias Kirchnereit, Nuron Mukumi, Razvan Popovici, Georgy Kovalev, Přemysl Vojta, Jonathan Aner, Shirley Brill, and others. She has collaborated with members of ensembles such as the Ébène Quartet and the Kuss Quartet, and she was also a member of the Ensemble Esperanza, which won the Opus Classic Prize in 2018.
In collaboration with pianist Lovro Marušić, she founded the International Chamber Music Festival "Ostinato" in Omiš in 2018. In the same year, she performed as a soloist with the HRT Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Ivo Lipanović at a concert celebrating Lisinski Hall Day. In September 2019, she participated in the complete performance of L. van Beethoven's Sonatas for Cello and Piano at the Croatian Music Institute in Zagreb, on the occasion of the composer's 250th birth anniversary. In 2023, she performed piano trios by Sergei Rachmaninoff and Blagoje Bersa, marking the 150th birth anniversary of both composers, at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival and the Osor Musical Evenings, alongside violinist Marco Graziani and pianist Krešimir Starčević. Since 2024, she has served as a mentor for chamber music at the Academy of Music in Liechtenstein.
As a soloist, she has performed with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Pleven Philharmonic, Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, Croatian Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, Zagreb Soloists, Dubrovnik Symphony Orchestra, and Split Chamber Orchestra under the baton of distinguished conductors such as Aurelien Bello, Boguslav Davidow, Mladen Tarbuk, Tonči Bilić, and Pavle Zajcev. She has given solo recitals in Austria, Germany, France, Portugal, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland, appearing at international music festivals like the Next Generation Festival in Switzerland, Sommerliche Musiktage in Hitzacker, Germany, the Katya Popova Festival in Bulgaria, and Vaduz Classic and Musik Arte in Liechtenstein.